148 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
This universal observance of the Sabbath-day appears 
to an Englishman in humiliating contrast with its profa¬ 
nation in many favoured sections of his own country. The 
contrast is still more striking when compared with the 
manner in which it is perverted into a season of activity, 
business, and unwonted gaiety in the pursuit of pleasure, 
in Catholic countries—but it never appears so surprising 
as when viewed in comparison with the actual state of 
the people themselves only a few years ago. No Sab¬ 
bath had then ever dawned, no happy multitudes met 
for praise and prayer, no lovely throngs of children 
gathered in the Sabbath-schools, no inspired page or 
Christian preacher directed their attention to the Lord 
of the Sabbath 5 but when the devotees naet for public 
worship, it was under the gloom of dark overshadowing 
trees, amid the recesses of some rude temple, before 
some rustic altar, or in the presence of some deity of 
frightful form and fearful attributes, the offspring of 
their own imagination. 
